Of Mice And Men

David writes at Dangerous Creation. He is an Aussie who pays attention to the ups and downs of American politics, political blunders, economic woes and our warmongering ways. ~ Dusty

This morning I watched an Australian current affairs program (Insiders) that came from the U.S. The topic, you guessed it, was the interminable American Election.

During the course of the program leading strategists from the Democrat and the Republican camps were interviewed and then followed a panel discussion with three people who came from the media and one from one of the American institutes, etc.

I felt a sense of increasing frustration as the program continued because, though it was agreed that America needed to change its direction and modify its arrogance, the participants carefully avoided the main issue: that of fixing the deeply flawed, easily manipulated American political system, the one that Bush clearly exposed for the whole world to see.

Into my mind flashed the moving story “Of Mice And Men.” It was as if Steinbeck, in 1937, had, without knowing it, written a cautionary tale, one that would symbolize America in the twenty-first century. To me, America seems to be an amalgam of both George and Lennie, a fraught combination of cynical cunning and retarded power.

Follow up:

Now most people know the story. During the Great Depression, two men who dream one day of owning a farm get work on a property. George Milton is smart, cynical and ambitious. Lennie Small is huge and has great strength but he has the mentality of a child, a child who loves petting soft, furred creatures. However, he doesn’t realize his own strength and sometimes he kills them (see photograph of Lennie with his now dead pet mouse). This need has already created problems in other places. To cut a long story short, George tries to pet the hair of his boss’s wife and accidentally kills her. To stop Lennie being killed by a mob, George shoots him and heads for the hills.

How does this relate to America, you ask? Well, like George Milton, America is cunning, cynical and has great ambitions based purely upon its own self-interest. And like Lennie Small, it possesses enormous strength via its military but it hasn’t got the intellect to use it with maturity or wisdom or subtlety. So it blunders from war to war, never learning that violence is counterproductive.

The result? Currently America, because of major foreign policy blunders since WW2 (and because of George Bush) is the most hated country in the world and yet, unbelievably, it is now contemplating the nuking of Iran which will further enrage the whole Muslim world. And, instead of learning from the Bush experience and changing flawed aspects of its political system (like giving the President too much power), America is forging full steam ahead to elect yet another President who will have the same powers as Bush does. It’s like giving Lennie more and more pets which, sadly he inevitably kills.

People who don’t learn from history always make the same mistakes. It’s time to get rid of the Lennies and the Georges who occupy powerful places in the American Government and the Pentagon and allow some normal, sane, non-greedy, peace-loving people to run the country.

Otherwise the greed-based, misdirected strength of America will destroy our world.

Crossposted at Dangerous Creation